Tickles, iteration, and habits

Abstract At first pass, Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) recommends one-boxing in Newcomb’s Problem and Causal Decision Theory (CDT) recommends two-boxing. However, it has been acknowledged that concrete instances of the problem have messy features complicating their analyses. Recently, a third competitor, Functional Decision Theory (FDT) has emerged recommending one-boxing in some versions and two-boxing in others. This paper explores the verdicts of these competing theories in a few variations of the problem involving iteration and habit. We argue that this motivates the re-evaluation of case intuitions in decision theory and greater consideration of formal and structural relationships between CDT and FDT.